July 28, 2025 • 13 mins
Hi everyone, welcome to a back-to-back revenge of the revelization, revelization! In this episode we are going to explore how changing the way we frame discomfort can help us reach our goals at the end of the day. Thanks for listening everyone!
Enjoying Revelizations and don't know what to do next? Let me offer a suggestion: Grab a device capable of playing a podcast along with some earbuds, turn on an episode of Revelizations, place them in the ears of your loved ones, and watch with joy as they thank you endlessly for introducing them to the Revelizations podcast. While you're at it feel free to leave a review on whatever platform you're listening and follow/subscribe so you never miss an episode.
Not enjoying Revelizations and don't know what you do next? Let me offer a suggestion, grab your loudest portable speaker capable of pairing with a device that can play a podcast, turn on an episode of Revelizations, go to a densely populated area with great acoustics, crank up the volume, and laugh maniacally as the unsuspecting population looks around in confusion to the situation they are in. While you're at it feel free to leave a review on whatever platform you're forcing everyone to listen to the Revelizations podcast and follow/subscribe so you don't miss these types of opportunities in the future.
Thanks to today's sponsor: Rent-A-Puppy
Be sure to use code “Revelizations” at any and all checkouts to receive an additional zero percent off on all purchases.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
This episode of Revelizations is brought to you by Rent-A-Puppy.
Tired of going home to an empty house?
Do you need more responsibility?
Do you need an excuse to get out of the commitment you made too hastily?
Need an accountability buddy to exercise daily?
(00:29):
Have too much money and don't know what to do with it?
Are you a charmless individual who can't make friends but would like to everywhere
you go?
If you answered yes to any of these questions but have a further caveat that you don't
want a full-time commitment, then boy howdy, do you need Rent-A-Puppy.
With Rent-A-Puppy, get all the perks of owning a puppy without any of the long-term commitment.
(00:54):
Simply download our app, select the breed of dog you want, the duration of the rental
period along with your credit card information, and in three to five business days, you'll
have a puppy delivered straight to your door.
Once your rental period is up, simply open your front door, put the dog outside, and
forget about it.
Not your puppy, not your problem.
(01:17):
Don't be a yuppie, Rent-A-Puppy.
Hi everyone, and welcome to Revelizations.
(01:43):
I'm your host, Brian James.
Oh no, not another Revelization episode of Revelizations.
Don't worry, I'm with you.
It's definitely not my desire to turn this podcast into a pontification fest.
It's just that I currently don't have any new conversations with the guests to share
with you.
(02:04):
Since I started releasing interview-style episodes, I've had a backlog queue of conversations
that I've now exhausted.
This outcome was expected.
That's why I had the idea of releasing my own standalone thoughts as Revelization episodes
to use as stop gaps between the conversation-style episodes.
These Revelization episodes serve multiple purposes.
(02:26):
The first, allow me more time to find guests to interview so I can keep a comfortable buffer
of cached interviews.
The other is to showcase how brilliant I am.
Thankfully, the episodes have served at least half of their purpose and it is only now,
after about 10 months of releasing podcast episodes consistently every other week, that
(02:46):
I have come to this fork in the road where I find myself.
No interview episode reservoir to draw from for this week's episode of Revelizations.
That leaves me with two options.
To either release two back-to-back monologue episodes, which I'm not sure anyone wants,
or not release an episode until I've secured another conversation with a guest.
(03:08):
As I mentioned some time ago, I'm not particularly prolific and I don't consider myself all
too clever.
The truth is that the same background noise of feeling like an imposter, feeling like
I have nothing new to contribute in this sphere, feeling like I'm not special, so why would
anyone listen to me, is always present.
A constant companion of perpetual buzzing, if not a deafening thunder that stops me dead.
(03:35):
It's in the moments where the self-doubt noise is the loudest where a friendlier voice likes
to chime in.
Take a break.
Go ahead.
Take it.
You clearly need one.
You'll rest and come back stronger.
This is the complacency voice.
The voice that wants to keep us stagnant in the familiar.
Even though the situation isn't the most comfortable, at least we know what to expect.
(04:00):
It leads to the path of least resistance.
And it's easy because, in order to take it, all we have to do is nothing.
Be passive.
And the path comes to you.
This voice is persistent and persuasive.
I often follow the orders with little resistance.
After all, I'm a product of the instant gratification era we find ourselves in.
(04:22):
Why do something difficult in the present, where it doesn't pay dividends until later,
when I can do nothing and avoid any discomfort?
All that noise makes the option of not releasing an episode in my established cadence very
attractive to me.
I'll begin to construct a narrative how not releasing an episode is a better choice
for everyone.
(04:43):
It's in everyone's best interest for me to not follow through with a commitment I
made for myself.
I don't have to be vulnerable and share something that I think is profound that others
may think is stupid.
And people who would otherwise be listening to an episode of my podcast, they can fill
their time doing something more productive, rather than listen to me blab, win-win, and
(05:04):
all that may be true.
What also is true, I know once I allow myself to make an excuse for myself, then the next
time I find myself in a similar situation, it isn't even something I will wrestle with.
I just won't do it, because that's the quick fix to not feel the uncomfortable feelings
of letting myself down.
When I was in college, there was a classmate I was interested in dating.
(05:28):
In one of those classes, she told me that she is a runner and is training for an upcoming
half marathon.
She invited me also to run it with her.
A half marathon is 13.1 miles, which is a little over 20 kilometers for all of my non-imperial
measurement listeners.
I balked at the invitation at first.
That resistance was short-lived.
(05:50):
I gave in quickly, as I thought she was cute, and this would be a good opportunity to seamlessly
spend time with her outside of class.
A couple of problems quickly became apparent after accepting her offer.
The first was that I never trained cardio.
I enjoyed going to the gym for weightlifting, but that's all I would do.
On top of that, the marathon was less than two months away.
(06:13):
This story has a lot of revelizations that I learned, and instead of going through all
of them, I'm going to break through for my usual pattern of meandering storytelling
and try to keep this a little more succinct.
Even though I think in order to better learn a lesson, it's best to sit in it for a while.
Perhaps I can revisit this story and further pull out the additional revelizations in future
(06:33):
episodes.
I will say, however, that other than running a half-marathon together, which we ended up
getting split from each other early on in the race, this classmate and I spent very
little time out of class together.
So no, this isn't the story of how I met my wife.
As I was training for this half-marathon, my body started to ache a lot.
(06:56):
I didn't train my body for endurance, I trained it for short bouts of intense weightlifting.
Running for this half-marathon was a completely different type of fitness that I didn't have.
I remember before a lot of runs, that silver-toned complacency voice popping into my head.
Hey, didn't you just run the other day?
You did really good.
(07:17):
You should take today off.
It's pretty cold outside today, too.
You don't want to catch a cold.
Relax today, and you can make up for it tomorrow.
The voice was always there, and didn't ever quiet down.
Not even on the runs.
Hey, wow!
Look how far you've run!
You can probably just walk now, or better yet, just go back home.
(07:40):
I remember many times wanting to give in to the complacency invitation, and many times
coming close.
If it wasn't for a competing thought, I'm sure I would have.
It was during those runs that I was able to zoom out of the temporary discomfort of being
out of breath, feeling tired, being cold, and had the realization that at the end of
(08:02):
the day I was going to be lying in my bed.
I'd no longer be out of breath, I would be completely comfortable, and I'd reflect
back on my day.
Regardless of what I chose to do with my day, that moment in time was going to come to pass.
In that time of reflection, I could either be happy that I completed my run for the day,
or disappointed that I didn't.
(08:23):
Those were my only two options.
It was that realization that helped me persevere through the discomfort and accomplish something
that got me closer to my bigger goal.
In this case, going from not running to completing a half-marathon in less than two months.
I'm not the most emotionally emotive individual.
It's something my wife can definitely corroborate.
(08:45):
However, I remember as I crossed the finish line for the half-marathon, tears began welling
up in my eyes.
I did it.
All those moments of my body telling me to stop, and my brain telling my body to quiet
down and keep moving.
Moments that I chose to lace up my shoes rather than sit on the couch.
Moments choosing to run further today than the day before.
(09:09):
Moments where the only thing keeping me moving forward was knowing that I will be at home,
in my bed, completely comfortable later that night.
All those moments coalesced into the feeling of overwhelming accomplishment that was washing
over me as I crossed the finish line.
At any point in time, I could have chosen to listen to the complacency voice and done
(09:30):
the easier thing.
I didn't, and that moment was my reward.
A special memory of that time, too, was that I knew my friends Nick, Zach, and Kevin were
going to be at the race to support me.
There were so many times throughout the race where I would think, okay, this next corner,
they will be there to cheer me on and I would get a second wind out of it every time.
(09:53):
I actually never saw them throughout the race, and I think that may have actually worked
to my advantage because if I would have seen them earlier, I wouldn't have been able
to tap into the extra reserve energy they gave me every time I thought I was going to
see them soon.
I did see them at the finish line, along with my dad, and that support still means a lot
to me to this day.
(10:14):
My dad and those friends are still there supporting me in this race I find myself running now.
Maybe this is a two-in-one realization about the importance of who you choose to surround
yourself with in this life.
Make the right choice and surround yourself with the ones who will fill you with the energy
to keep persevering.
In living life, there is a constant tug of war between instant gratification and delayed
(10:38):
gratification.
Something you will hear about people who are contemplating a career change or going back
to school.
Someone wants to be a lawyer, but they'll have to be in school for the next four years.
Someone who has reached as far as they can go with one company and they know of another
company that's hiring that has higher income potential, but they'll have to start at the
bottom of the ladder again.
(11:00):
The reality is that time is going to pass regardless of whether or not you go to law
school.
Stay with your current company, start over at a new company, go for that run, or don't
go for the run.
Time only goes in one direction, there are no do-overs.
At the end of the day, we either get to be happy that we made choices that get us to
(11:22):
the future we want, or left with feelings of regret wishing we made other choices.
I hope this mindset can help you as much as it has me.
Thanks for listening everyone.
My kids have been hounding me to get a dog ever since the latest Air Bud movie came
(12:00):
out.
Here's the thing, I know this was going to be like the baby deer they talked me into
fauna all over again.
They'll love it for a week, get bored, stop feeding and cleaning up after it, which leaves
me to give it the old yeller treatment.
I can't do that again.
Not with PETA constantly watching me.
(12:20):
Thankfully, I discovered Rent-A-Puppy.
With Rent-A-Puppy, I picked out the dog my kids wanted and had it at my doorstep in a
few short days.
And just like I thought, after a couple weeks, my kids got tired of the responsibility of
a dog.
So after the rental period expired and my kids were at school, I put the dog outside
(12:41):
and Rent-A-Puppy came and picked it back up.
Oh, what did I tell my kids when they asked where their dog went?
Well, my kids always forget to close the door when they go outside.
I told them that Fido must have went out the open door and got hit by a car.
Now, the kids don't ask about Fido.
They always close the door when they leave the house and they don't have to keep paying
(13:03):
for dog food.
Three birds with one stone.
Thanks, Rent-A-Puppy.
Rent-A-Puppy.
Don't be a yuppie.
Rent-A-Puppy.
This episode of Revelizations is brought to you by Rent-A-Puppy.
Tired of going home to an empty house?
Do you need more responsibility?
Do you need an excuse to get out of the commitment you made too hastily?
Need an accountability buddy to exercise daily?
(00:29):
Have too much money and don't know what to do with it?
Are you a charmless individual who can't make friends but would like to everywhere
you go?
If you answered yes to any of these questions but have a further caveat that you don't
want a full-time commitment, then boy howdy, do you need Rent-A-Puppy.
With Rent-A-Puppy, get all the perks of owning a puppy without any of the long-term commitment.
(00:54):
Simply download our app, select the breed of dog you want, the duration of the rental
period along with your credit card information, and in three to five business days, you'll
have a puppy delivered straight to your door.
Once your rental period is up, simply open your front door, put the dog outside, and
forget about it.
Not your puppy, not your problem.
(01:17):
Don't be a yuppie, Rent-A-Puppy.
Hi everyone, and welcome to Revelizations.
(01:43):
I'm your host, Brian James.
Oh no, not another Revelization episode of Revelizations.
Don't worry, I'm with you.
It's definitely not my desire to turn this podcast into a pontification fest.
It's just that I currently don't have any new conversations with the guests to share
with you.
(02:04):
Since I started releasing interview-style episodes, I've had a backlog queue of conversations
that I've now exhausted.
This outcome was expected.
That's why I had the idea of releasing my own standalone thoughts as Revelization episodes
to use as stop gaps between the conversation-style episodes.
These Revelization episodes serve multiple purposes.
(02:26):
The first, allow me more time to find guests to interview so I can keep a comfortable buffer
of cached interviews.
The other is to showcase how brilliant I am.
Thankfully, the episodes have served at least half of their purpose and it is only now,
after about 10 months of releasing podcast episodes consistently every other week, that
(02:46):
I have come to this fork in the road where I find myself.
No interview episode reservoir to draw from for this week's episode of Revelizations.
That leaves me with two options.
To either release two back-to-back monologue episodes, which I'm not sure anyone wants,
or not release an episode until I've secured another conversation with a guest.
(03:08):
As I mentioned some time ago, I'm not particularly prolific and I don't consider myself all
too clever.
The truth is that the same background noise of feeling like an imposter, feeling like
I have nothing new to contribute in this sphere, feeling like I'm not special, so why would
anyone listen to me, is always present.
A constant companion of perpetual buzzing, if not a deafening thunder that stops me dead.
(03:35):
It's in the moments where the self-doubt noise is the loudest where a friendlier voice likes
to chime in.
Take a break.
Go ahead.
Take it.
You clearly need one.
You'll rest and come back stronger.
This is the complacency voice.
The voice that wants to keep us stagnant in the familiar.
Even though the situation isn't the most comfortable, at least we know what to expect.
(04:00):
It leads to the path of least resistance.
And it's easy because, in order to take it, all we have to do is nothing.
Be passive.
And the path comes to you.
This voice is persistent and persuasive.
I often follow the orders with little resistance.
After all, I'm a product of the instant gratification era we find ourselves in.
(04:22):
Why do something difficult in the present, where it doesn't pay dividends until later,
when I can do nothing and avoid any discomfort?
All that noise makes the option of not releasing an episode in my established cadence very
attractive to me.
I'll begin to construct a narrative how not releasing an episode is a better choice
for everyone.
(04:43):
It's in everyone's best interest for me to not follow through with a commitment I
made for myself.
I don't have to be vulnerable and share something that I think is profound that others
may think is stupid.
And people who would otherwise be listening to an episode of my podcast, they can fill
their time doing something more productive, rather than listen to me blab, win-win, and
(05:04):
all that may be true.
What also is true, I know once I allow myself to make an excuse for myself, then the next
time I find myself in a similar situation, it isn't even something I will wrestle with.
I just won't do it, because that's the quick fix to not feel the uncomfortable feelings
of letting myself down.
When I was in college, there was a classmate I was interested in dating.
(05:28):
In one of those classes, she told me that she is a runner and is training for an upcoming
half marathon.
She invited me also to run it with her.
A half marathon is 13.1 miles, which is a little over 20 kilometers for all of my non-imperial
measurement listeners.
I balked at the invitation at first.
That resistance was short-lived.
(05:50):
I gave in quickly, as I thought she was cute, and this would be a good opportunity to seamlessly
spend time with her outside of class.
A couple of problems quickly became apparent after accepting her offer.
The first was that I never trained cardio.
I enjoyed going to the gym for weightlifting, but that's all I would do.
On top of that, the marathon was less than two months away.
(06:13):
This story has a lot of revelizations that I learned, and instead of going through all
of them, I'm going to break through for my usual pattern of meandering storytelling
and try to keep this a little more succinct.
Even though I think in order to better learn a lesson, it's best to sit in it for a while.
Perhaps I can revisit this story and further pull out the additional revelizations in future
(06:33):
episodes.
I will say, however, that other than running a half-marathon together, which we ended up
getting split from each other early on in the race, this classmate and I spent very
little time out of class together.
So no, this isn't the story of how I met my wife.
As I was training for this half-marathon, my body started to ache a lot.
(06:56):
I didn't train my body for endurance, I trained it for short bouts of intense weightlifting.
Running for this half-marathon was a completely different type of fitness that I didn't have.
I remember before a lot of runs, that silver-toned complacency voice popping into my head.
Hey, didn't you just run the other day?
You did really good.
(07:17):
You should take today off.
It's pretty cold outside today, too.
You don't want to catch a cold.
Relax today, and you can make up for it tomorrow.
The voice was always there, and didn't ever quiet down.
Not even on the runs.
Hey, wow!
Look how far you've run!
You can probably just walk now, or better yet, just go back home.
(07:40):
I remember many times wanting to give in to the complacency invitation, and many times
coming close.
If it wasn't for a competing thought, I'm sure I would have.
It was during those runs that I was able to zoom out of the temporary discomfort of being
out of breath, feeling tired, being cold, and had the realization that at the end of
(08:02):
the day I was going to be lying in my bed.
I'd no longer be out of breath, I would be completely comfortable, and I'd reflect
back on my day.
Regardless of what I chose to do with my day, that moment in time was going to come to pass.
In that time of reflection, I could either be happy that I completed my run for the day,
or disappointed that I didn't.
(08:23):
Those were my only two options.
It was that realization that helped me persevere through the discomfort and accomplish something
that got me closer to my bigger goal.
In this case, going from not running to completing a half-marathon in less than two months.
I'm not the most emotionally emotive individual.
It's something my wife can definitely corroborate.
(08:45):
However, I remember as I crossed the finish line for the half-marathon, tears began welling
up in my eyes.
I did it.
All those moments of my body telling me to stop, and my brain telling my body to quiet
down and keep moving.
Moments that I chose to lace up my shoes rather than sit on the couch.
Moments choosing to run further today than the day before.
(09:09):
Moments where the only thing keeping me moving forward was knowing that I will be at home,
in my bed, completely comfortable later that night.
All those moments coalesced into the feeling of overwhelming accomplishment that was washing
over me as I crossed the finish line.
At any point in time, I could have chosen to listen to the complacency voice and done
(09:30):
the easier thing.
I didn't, and that moment was my reward.
A special memory of that time, too, was that I knew my friends Nick, Zach, and Kevin were
going to be at the race to support me.
There were so many times throughout the race where I would think, okay, this next corner,
they will be there to cheer me on and I would get a second wind out of it every time.
(09:53):
I actually never saw them throughout the race, and I think that may have actually worked
to my advantage because if I would have seen them earlier, I wouldn't have been able
to tap into the extra reserve energy they gave me every time I thought I was going to
see them soon.
I did see them at the finish line, along with my dad, and that support still means a lot
to me to this day.
(10:14):
My dad and those friends are still there supporting me in this race I find myself running now.
Maybe this is a two-in-one realization about the importance of who you choose to surround
yourself with in this life.
Make the right choice and surround yourself with the ones who will fill you with the energy
to keep persevering.
In living life, there is a constant tug of war between instant gratification and delayed
(10:38):
gratification.
Something you will hear about people who are contemplating a career change or going back
to school.
Someone wants to be a lawyer, but they'll have to be in school for the next four years.
Someone who has reached as far as they can go with one company and they know of another
company that's hiring that has higher income potential, but they'll have to start at the
bottom of the ladder again.
(11:00):
The reality is that time is going to pass regardless of whether or not you go to law
school.
Stay with your current company, start over at a new company, go for that run, or don't
go for the run.
Time only goes in one direction, there are no do-overs.
At the end of the day, we either get to be happy that we made choices that get us to
(11:22):
the future we want, or left with feelings of regret wishing we made other choices.
I hope this mindset can help you as much as it has me.
Thanks for listening everyone.
My kids have been hounding me to get a dog ever since the latest Air Bud movie came
(12:00):
out.
Here's the thing, I know this was going to be like the baby deer they talked me into
fauna all over again.
They'll love it for a week, get bored, stop feeding and cleaning up after it, which leaves
me to give it the old yeller treatment.
I can't do that again.
Not with PETA constantly watching me.
(12:20):
Thankfully, I discovered Rent-A-Puppy.
With Rent-A-Puppy, I picked out the dog my kids wanted and had it at my doorstep in a
few short days.
And just like I thought, after a couple weeks, my kids got tired of the responsibility of
a dog.
So after the rental period expired and my kids were at school, I put the dog outside
(12:41):
and Rent-A-Puppy came and picked it back up.
Oh, what did I tell my kids when they asked where their dog went?
Well, my kids always forget to close the door when they go outside.
I told them that Fido must have went out the open door and got hit by a car.
Now, the kids don't ask about Fido.
They always close the door when they leave the house and they don't have to keep paying
(13:03):
for dog food.
Three birds with one stone.
Thanks, Rent-A-Puppy.
Rent-A-Puppy.
Don't be a yuppie.
Rent-A-Puppy.
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